Family Care International has been active in Kenya since the early 1990s and registered as an NGO since 1995. The office, based in Nairobi, is led and staffed by health and advocacy professionals who are Kenya nationals.

FCI-Kenya is recognized for its research, advocacy, and capacity building work on maternal health, reproductive health, and adolescent sexual and reproductive health, all of which it addresses in the context of a continuum of care encompassing women, newborns, and children.

FCI-Kenya collaborates closely with the Ministry of Health, as well as with UN agencies and a range of civil society partners, at the national, provincial and county level to raise awareness, develop innovative solutions and tools, strengthen the voices of national and local advocates, and ensure that programs and services work to improve maternal and reproductive health outcomes in the communities where women are still dying every day. Our work focuses on:

Advocating for greater political commitment, stronger policies, and more funding for programs that save women’s lives.

Conducting research to support evidence-based advocacy for policy change by helping policy makers understand the scale of the problem, ensuring that cost estimates are accurate and new policies will be efficacious, and recommending health interventions that have been proven to work.

FCI-Kenya is a leading player in national and regional efforts to improve maternal and reproductive health. FCI’s recent work has included:

Working with government ministries, parliamentary committees, and NGO partners to establish policy foundations, develop legislative language, and build support for a national maternal health law that is in line with Kenya’s updated Constitution

Equipping national and grassroots organisations with the information and skills they need to monitor government fulfillment of commitments, and to advocate for the full achievement of established policy, finance, and program targets

Acting as secretariat for a national Countdown to 2015 initiative, which will conduct in-depth analysis of data on coverage of key reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health interventions, focusing in particular on sub-national data and on equity of coverage across geographic, gender, and socio-economic lines

Documenting the social and human costs of maternal death to families and communities, through a research project called A Price Too High to Bear, which will demonstrate to policy makers the socioeconomic benefits of maternal health investments

Tracking the efficiency and effectiveness of funding flows from the national government to local primary health facilities, examining community input mechanisms on expenditures and assessing perceived quality of care; thereby informing and persuading policy makers to prioritize the improvement of maternity services

During the period from 2000 through 2007, FCI-Kenya implemented a range of health facility interventions to increase utilization of skilled childbirth care in rural areas, as part of FCI's multi-country Skilled Care Initiative.

The Republic of Kenya is a nation in the African Great Lakes region of East Africa, with a population of 44 million. Kenya became independent in December 1963. Following a referendum in August 2010 and adoption of a new constitution, Kenya is now divided into 47 semi-autonomous counties, governed by elected governors.

Kenya ranks 145th out of 186 countries listed on the United Nations' Human Development Index, as of 2012, with a gross per capita income of $1,541.

Kenya's maternal mortality ratio, according to 2010 UN interagency estimates, was 360 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. This represents only a 9% decrease in maternal mortality since 1990. (Kenya's maternal mortality ratio increased by more than 20% between 1990, and 2000; from 2000 to 2010, it was reduced by 27%.)

Kenya compares favorably with the overall maternal mortality ratio for sub-Saharan Africa, which was 500 per 100,000 in 2010, but Kenya has not made sufficient progress toward achievement of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG 5) target of reducing maternal mortality by 75% between 1990 and 2015.

According to Countdown to 2015, 44% of births in Kenya were attended by a skilled health worker as of 2008-2009. This represents a decrease from 1989, when 50% of births took place with a skilled attendant. The total fertility rate in 2010 was 4.7 children per woman, and 60% of adult women who wished to control their fertility had access to family planning (as of 2006).

More detailed data on reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health in Kenya are available from Countdown to 2015.

Connect with FCI...

A price too high to bear: the costs of maternal mortality to families and communities

In Kenya, FCI and our project partners, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and the Kenya Medical Research Institute/Centers for Disease Control (KEMRI/CDC-Kisumu), are conducting a three-year research project that seeks to provide the first full accounting of the costs of a maternal death for families and communities. This information will provide critical support for advocacy — in Kenya, in other developing countries, and at the global level — for improvements in the availability, quality, and utilization of maternal health services. – Read more at the FCI Blog here and here.

Follow the money: exploring the realities of health financing in Kenya

For poor people living in rural parts of Kenya, health centers and dispensaries are the major source of primary health care. However, these facilities and their users face numerous challenges which contribute to low staff morale, poor quality of care, and weak referral systems. For the last few years, the Government of Kenya has been implementing a reform initiative through which primary health care facilities funding to enable them to improve quality of care. FCI-Kenya is conducting a survey to evaluate the community’s knowledge of the reform system and their level of satisfaction with the quality of service and accountability since the implementation of reform program began. Read more at the FCI blog here.